Twist it up. Turn it around. Shift your perspective. Change your life

“The idea of warriorship is that the warrior should be sad and tender…” Chogyam Trungpa*

During my muscle release session yesterday with my yoga teacher I learned that tense muscles are not necessarily strong muscles. Unable to relax, rest and rejuvenate, a consistently tense muscle exhausts itself, begins to stagnate and becomes toxic. In the long run a persistently tense muscle weakens, opening itself up to disease and atrophy.

In order for a muscle to be strong it must take into itself life force—energy. It does so by contracting and increasing tension. A muscle exerts power by releasing this pent up energy, by lengthening, moving outwards, expending itself fully, and returning to a state of rest. It recovers.

In contrast, a muscle that is constantly holding tension has nowhere to go. It can contract no further. It is unable to draw life into itself. The muscle locks up, unable to move forward, unable to take action, unable to expend, and unable to relax and recuperate.

(Try this: inhale as deeply into your lungs as possible. Exhale only half of the breath you have stored in your lungs. From this halfway point, inhale again. Exhale halfway. Inhale and begin to notice how you feel in your body. It is likely that each time you are able to take less and less breath into yourself. There is less and less capacity for new breath, new air, new life to infuse itself into you. And at the same time, that initial breath has never fully been expelled. It sits in your lungs, stagnating, taking up space, diminishing your capacity to live and breathe fully. How does this make you feel in your body? In your mind? This is like a muscle in a constant state of tension/contraction.)

Day after day, year after year, a locked muscle remains in the same position, weakening, dying.

Wise ones throughout the centuries have noted that “as without, so within”; therefore, as our bodies, so our communities. Recently, I have watched as our city has prepared for the G20. We began to harden the heart of the city by erecting concrete and metal structures that create separation and polarity. Us and them. An increase in tension. We’ve armoured ourselves. Less space and ability to move. Police are donning Kevlar riot gear and are prepared to use force to beat back any threats, threats that amount to the soft flesh of other human beings. Increase in tension. Tension on top of tension. Less capacity to breathe and move.

I hear the echoes of my partner’s voice in my ear, “PEACE DOES NOT WORK!!!!!” How do we know? Historically, in this country, we have never tried it. (Gandhi used peace to create some of the greatest social change in his country. Peace, clearly, has some tremendous transformative powers!) As settlers we forced our way onto this land and have torn through it ever since creating separate communities, separation from the land, separation from ourselves—creating tension. More and more tension. Greater and greater weakness.

What truly would happen if we softened towards one another? What would happen if, today, as that police officer raised a club to strike the 18 year old girl in front of him who only wishes to express herself, a lightbulb goes off in his head and he thinks, “That is somebody’s daughter. That could be my daughter.” And he put down his club and refused to strike. What if that rage-filled anarchist protestor thought, “That horse feels fear and pain like I do,” and “That store was built by the blood, sweat and tears of a person who hopes and dreams like I do”? And she put down that rock, refusing to throw it. What would happen if the leaders who are here right now said, “I can no longer stand knowing there are people in my country whose basic needs—food, clothing, shelter—are not being met. It breaks my heart and I can stand it no longer. Let us all use this money to feed, clothe and house our community members in healthy and more-than-adequate ways”?

It is much more challenging to speak and act from a soft and tender place. We have been trained to believe that hard is strength and soft is weak. But, like a healthy muscle, remaining soft and pliable allows for the drawing in of energies that lead to greater strength and more efficient movement. It takes far more courage to soften, to speak from a place of vulnerability, to listen with an open heart, and to solve difficulties in a tender way. Chogyam Trungpa writes that through sadness and tenderness,” …the warrior can be very brave…Without that heartfelt sadness, bravery is brittle, like a china cup. If you drop it, it will break or chip. But the bravery of the warrior is like a lacquer cup, which has a wooden base covered with layers of lacquer. If the cup drops, it will bounce rather than break. It is soft and hard at the same time.”

We don’t need more tension and force in this world. Our society is locked up like a tense and stagnating muscle. As a community we are accumulating toxins. We are stagnating. We are weakening and we are growing evermore diseased.